Under The Surface
by PurpleYin
Summary: Fic collection for Nora Darhk character study one shots. Chapter 6 - S4 Nora and Beltane - Nora doesn't want to be afraid of her magic any more.
1. Chapter 1: S3 and the price of magic

**A/N:** Thanks to both Scylla87 and unwittingcatalyst for betareading. :)

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 **Nora across S3 and the cost of magic**

The most important lesson of magic is there is always, always a price to pay. Her father teaches her that well – her servitude is the price they pay for his resurrection. A life for a life, and it is neatly cyclical because she has to do what Mallus bids if she is to grow into the woman who her father tells her did the deed. He describes that night with such reverence it feels to her like it's already set in stone. His smile and the tight hug around her make her flush with pride, how he trusts in her abilities. Those abilities aren't learned yet but she has made a promise, a commitment, she will uphold. She doesn't know then the full price, but it feels worth it at that exact moment.

Her father leaves. She sees then she isn't allowed to grow up with him guiding her, because he is her incentive – she will see him when she saves him. He won't see how much it hurts her to watch him go, he does it willingly. He goes back to the future, back to another her who is worthier of his time – that is the one he is proud of, not the girl who almost said no. She _didn't_ say no, but Mallus knows, knows how close she was and he won't let her forget how much she has to prove to get her reward, her father returned to her. Her father is never returned to the girl she is though, that girl will forever yearn for approval she doesn't get. The demonic whispers in her ear are the closest thing she can accept.

The years she toils to become the woman who raises the dead are not the cost either. By then she would pay anything, certainly the blood of bystanders and the fools who attempt to stop her – her father is the goal and Mallus is the means. So he lets her believe. On the crux of their triumph his voice doesn't remain a whisper inside. Her voice becomes his, corrupted and cruel, emboldened, a taste of what is to come. She's no timid girl that night, she relishes the rush of power burning her up. As she looks to her father she feels the nostalgic pride she can finally lay claim to.

The true price is the last price offered. A life for a life. Her father pays it back with himself, his sacrificed to give hers back to her. He plots and he succeeds, by all accounts is pleased to get his way but it doesn't feel like a victory. Even when Mallus is destroyed, it isn't right. It's a waste. Hollow years made meaningless the cost revealed in the instant she wakes to realize she is here and her father is gone, never to rise from this. All she has worked towards unraveled so fast, she is rendered emotionally null and void in the aftermath, her purse empty.


	2. Chapter 2: Nora's alternative education

**A/N:** Warning for controlling behaviour of Mallus and mention of magical abuse and past ECT (Electroconvulsive therapy).

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 **Nora's alternative education**

If she were a normal girl she would be in high school. If, if. She would be picking electives and after-school clubs – her father might've been proud of debate club.

But she's not a normal girl, never has been. Her life until her parents died feels like it was an illusion, a glamour cast over what they really were. Oliver Queen ripped off the face presented to the world, left her raw. Here she is, her new protection one akin to bandages wrapped too tight, making it hard to breathe.

She doesn't learn science, instead alchemy. The Order's priorities are so very different, but she knows this has her father's approval. She devours history books, the one subject in common with her old pursuits. She ignores the swell of fascination as she reads the texts, this isn't for her. Mallus needs time broken, she might as well know it thoroughly to ensure it's so.

She traces practice runes in the sand, never completely formed as they shift, never used pre-emptively. Art is only taught in so far as she can draw what she must, she knows now no paper is spared for inconsequential things – she still feels the itch in her fingers as she thinks of drawing something she _wants_ to, but the intent alone hurts, an effective deterrent after the punishment she'd found unexpectedly. They can't touch her physically anymore, she is for Mallus. ECT would cause her to forget what she needs to know, a detriment to her education, but there are so many spells they can do to deal damage that doesn't last. At least it doesn't last to see - how she feels, how she crawls in her skin at remembering them, is another matter.

She repeats their incantations with her hands bound behind her back, power called imprecisely at first. As it rises right it bubbles within, but is never released – they don't trust her to obey yet so she is going through the motions, without the acts needed to cast. They make her pull it down inside herself, then they make her sit with it until it subsides, a different torture than before. They want her to know magic inside and out, readying her for his will. His vessel must be perfect, who she was is not something they care about, only who she is to be shaped into before her shape is him.


	3. Chapter 3: End of S3 and layers

**A/N:** Warning for a brief mention near the start that could be considered vague suicidal ideation.

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 **End of S3 - layers**

Her father is _dead_. Shredded by Mallus into nothing. He isn't a cold body as before, he isn't even dust, his energy consumed in place of her's. Her whole adult life she had been preparing for that moment and now she'd been robbed of it. Nora was willing, ready – her time had come, no more waiting, praying to a demon to take her away like he promised year upon year.

Instead she is in a sterile room on the ship of her enemies. She is raging against Ray Palmer's arms that try to steady her. She is crying, _weak_ in the worst way in front of him, screaming to cover it with anger. Then she is still, weeping, giving up again in the face of defeat.

Her path has always been made by others; her agreement, her complicit actions mere echoes of what others set in motion. So now with no other direction she is pliant, she lets him wrap her in layers – a coat to protect against the bite of a chill she couldn't care less about. She follows Ray out of the room and down the ramp to the grimy godforsaken town that means absolutely nothing to her. She follows him into the tavern and she doesn't protest. She says so very little, feels so very little, apart from the ebbing despair and an encroaching fear – what now?

There is no dad, no whispering inside her head, no plan, except the plan the Legends have against Mallus. She can have revenge in its smallest form, so she fights anachronisms and doesn't think too hard on what she is.

She isn't 'good' that day, on their side. She is just so hurt she's lost and clinging to what is in front of her. It's over quicker than she'd expected but she doesn't care why. She doesn't care about the excitement, the relief the others show, because for her this is the beginning of something else, something long coming, what she deserves, what was previously a niggling thought but never a real threat whilst others protected her. The Time Bureau will lock her up and it might be worse than what has passed - the asylum, The Order - because it won't have an end. She won't have a purpose in her future, just too much time to think, truly alone in the world this time. No rescue is coming for her, for she's no damsel.

Except then Ray is begging a goodbye for reasons she can't fathom and she's tuning out as he rambles about his pathetic excuse for a lie, his out of place joviality frustrating, though he gets her attention back when he mentions her father. Ray is also looking at her strangely, even for him, with a hint of strangled emotion. Despite the sombreness there's something bright in his expression, something he can't fully suppress as he presses the timestone into her hand.

She doesn't suddenly have a plan. No, she has something less expected as she palms the 'keepsake' and lets herself be led away. She has _hope_ and no clue what to do with it. It's so foreign a feeling after the unrelenting chaos surrounding her last few decades. It had no place under the cloak of darkness that so long cowed her into submission – things were how they were and she had simply taken what was given, filled herself up with words she didn't mean but knew she was supposed to say. But she has hope and she has herself, whoever she finds she is tomorrow, and every new day.


	4. Chapter 4: pre and during Daddy Darhkest

**Nora pre/during 3x10 Daddy Darhkest**

The voice tells her darkness is in her, dark is her destiny. It repeats it relentlessly in incessant iterations, stressing and straining as if to imply Dar **h** k. Which baffles her as much as it scares and angers her. She can't sleep and she daren't tell the doctors what **it** rants about to keep her awake. The doctors can see, just as she does in the reflections she spies as they shuffle her around the facility, that she isn't well rested, isn't _well_. Mega understatement there.

Nora is the last Darhk though and she doesn't even have the name anymore. Hasn't had it since Oliver Queen killed her father and she was ushered out of the limelight. Her name was taken for her protection. Her new ones are empty to speak, they hold no power. Yet the voice tells her she can help it, she has something left to give the world despite her virtually nameless presence in this decrepit place she has been left to rot in.

All she wants is to drown it out - she tries to cram her brain full of facts, lines of poetry recited like a ward and thoughts of her own to push it out, but she can't keep it up forever. It's there when she falters, it's there every moment, every split second she stops to breathe. She can't shake off the coldness that comes either when she senses its hold on her; not the shallow chill of the night and the lack of blankets provided. The cold she's succumbing to is in her bones, a detachment she ought to fight but gets to feeling inevitable. There is no warmth left, the surroundings stealing what little she had, she falls further into the darkness waiting for her.

Until that day when she is persuaded to leave with the promise of something _else_ waiting for her. By all rights no one should care about her, no one is left to, but they – Ray and Zari - come to her rescue, brave in the face of the evil that lurks. She sees the sunshine in their smiles, the sweetness of being outside, free for a day, and she could almost feel the warmth of their light. The darkness comes anyway and clouds their minds with doubt. The only person who doesn't doubt her is her father and she believes then Darhk is her path.


	5. Chapter 5: 3x12 Ray helping Nora

**End of 3x12 Ray helps Nora on the beach**

Her whole body is wrenched, like something in her cells strains to be free. She has known pain before. Mallus is everything, including pain; Mallus trained the fear of it out of her many moons ago. This is something else, creates a fear unlike anything she has known. Perhaps part of it is due to the way her father looks at her, desperate and still as she gasps for breath. He can't help; she's doomed.

And then Ray is there, looking unchanged by the years, because for him it has been barely any time, barely any difference to his life. He's just as earnest as he kneels in the sand as the day he and Zari broke her free of the asylum. He's here to save her, and she would laugh if she could. Mallus laughs alongside her in her mind, relishing her darkness and taunting the faint vein of hope that remains at the memory. She doesn't need saving by him, he couldn't before, no one could, no one can. He should let her die if he knows what is good for him.

Of course he doesn't, Ray is too good, like an honorable knight. He is ever hopeful, an emotion captured in his response to her as he marvels at her remembering him. As if she could forget. Ray is everything she can never have because she is drowning in the depths of her family's legacy and she is nothing good to his everything light.

Her magic flows again in aching dribs and drabs, and then comes back fully in a flood all at once. She's flush with gratitude as it fills her to the brim again, marking her worth in the world, and she hates the feeling. The joy on his face at seeing her okay is more than she can take. She reaches out to him, to pull at his blood painfully, to show him what it felt like and to teach him his mistake. He shouldn't have returned for her. Mallus knows his threat, then and now, and however bright Ray is, the darkness consumes all.


	6. Chapter 6: S4 Nora and Beltane

**A/N:** This originated from a tumblr starter meme where you have to open a book and pick a line as a fic starter. I got - "But yeah, it's my first Beltane here," she said. - from 'Little Gods' by Holly Black, so I ended up writing a small scenario for Nora with that in mind.

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 **S4 Nora & Beltane**

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Nora doesn't want to be afraid of her magic any more so she studies various magical systems during her time incarcerated, with Mona bringing her a strange assortment of books to feed her curiosity. Eventually she figures out what she believes in; more than what she was told as a child. Not something purely dark as Mallus' cult taught her but not anything purely light either. She has a power that she has responsibility for, to wield it right. Understanding her magic is going to require a helluva lot more reflection and Nora decides no matter her many differences with Wiccan beliefs, Sabbats sound good to her. Celebration of magic like that is a comfort she's never been afforded and she wants to make the effort.

The first Sabbat she truly gets to celebrate is Beltane, on the Waverider of all places. She's not sure she wants Ray involved in it - what she's looking for is time to herself, just her thoughts to mull over. However, when Charlie pokes their head around the door to the replicator room, Nora doubts she's gonna get through the day without clueing at least someone in on her plans. Charlie raises eyebrows at the assortment of items piled up next to Nora and leans back against the door casually waiting for an explanation. Nora sighs, while racking her brain for what would get Charlie out of there with least answers given up. But then there's a spark of an idea in her head causing her to reconsider. Maybe having someone to talk to who gets what it's like to have power is exactly what she needed today.


End file.
